women on tv news.. serious broadcasters or eye candy?

Does anyone else watching news programs get distracted by incredibly sexy women? Do you like getting distracted by incredibly sexy women while watching the news, or does it get on your nerves?

It bothers me.. I just want to watch the news.

But watching cable news.. it’s tough.. and there’s even more distraction on Spanish news broadcasts.. and Spanish television in general.. talk about sexy senoritas!

I mostly watch news on PBS.. the PBS News Hour. None of the women on that program are remotely attractive. Judy Woodruff and Margaret Warner are both over 60, I am guessing, and are great news women. Very distinguished. People who are easy to respect. Margaret Warner is especially cool because she’s old but brave. She keeps going to dangerous spots in the Middle East. On camera, she’s sometimes wearing a shawl on her head, because she’s in hardcore Muslim areas. Yeah.. I respect that lady.

One of the main broadcasters on the News Hour is Gwen Ifill. She is younger than the other women on the News Hour. I just checked Wikipedia. She’s 57, which is surprising. She looks younger.

Is she attractive? Hell no. She looks very butch to me.

I don’t want anyone crabbing at me and calling me a racist. Yes, Ms. Ifill is black. No, I don’t think all black women are unattractive. There are many many many attractive black women out there.

Is calling a lesbian “butch” rude? Maybe, but I don’t use the term that way.  There are some lesbians who are cute and feminine, there are some who are average looking, and there are some who appear quite masculine.. and they mostly look masculine by choice (although not all do). I use the term “butch” so people know what sort of lesbian I am talking about.

I don’t know if Ifill is a lesbian. She just looks like one. Do I care if she’s a lesbian? No, I just care about how she is delivering the news, and that she is not strikingly beautiful.

Ifill does her job pretty well. She’s one of the show’s regular anchors. I can respect her.. except when she moderates presidential or vice-presidential debates.. then she shows her true colors.. she’s a rabid liberal at heart. I don’t like how she moderates debates. But, so far, I’ve not had a problem with her otherwise. At least not when she’s on the News Hour.

Let’s compare these women to some on Fox News, for example.

My dad has Fox News on a lot (although he is starting to tire of it), and I watch it sometimes.  I’m politically moderate, leaning just a tad toward the left. But, I am not nearly liberal enough to watch much MSNBC. However, there is an anchor on there late at night.. a nerdy guy who looks a little like Harry Potter. He’s kind of amusing. I forget his name. Other than that, I don’t bother with MSNBC. Besides PBS, I either watch CNN or Fox News.

There’s a fairly decent commentary show on Fox News called “The Five.” It doesn’t air at 5pm where I live, but I’m guessing it does in Eastern Time. The show is also called “The Five” because there are five people on the show.

Usually, there are three men and two women. They sit in a semi-circle.

The problem I have with “The Five” is that there is an incredibly sexy and distracting woman named Kimberly on that program, and she is always sitting in the foreground, showing off her legs.. and the rest of her. She always wears skin-tight dresses.

When Kimberly is not on the show, there is another woman sitting in her place.. another incredibly sexy woman. I don’t know her name, but I was astonished to see that she was dressed exactly like Kimberly. Wow. Yeah.. we know why these women are on the show.

The other main woman on the program is named Dana. She is nice looking, but not stunning. Dana is more smart that sexy.. someone I’d prefer to have on a news broadcast. Kimberly is probably quite intelligent, but women who look as attractive as she does, who are on news broadcasts.. I just have a difficult time taking them seriously. Fox has a few other knockout women on at various times of the day.

I haven’t noticed stunning women as much on CNN. Maybe that is because I watch CNN less that Fox, but maybe not. There are cute women on CNN. This I do not mind. Erin Burnett and Soledad O’Brien.. both cute,  but not overpoweringly sexy.

You might be wondering why I, a straight guy, am complaining about really hot women on TV. Good question.

The thing is.. I just don’t want to be aroused these days. I have far too much chaos going on in my head already. I don’t need sexual stimulation. I certainly don’t need sexual stimulation when I am watching a serious news broadcast.. not that everything on Fox News and CNN is serious news.. but anyway.

One woman on Fox who I can watch without any issue at all is Gretta Van Susteren. No.. she is not attractive. But, she’s got personality, and I think she’s doing a good job. I remember her from back in 1994-95.. the years of the infamous O.J. Simpson trial. Van Susteren was a legal analyst who was on TV a lot back then, and I liked her. It’s a good thing she’s on Fox.

One other woman on Fox who is worth mentioning.. Laura Ingraham. I don’t think she has a regular gig on the news channel, but I could be wrong. She’s somewhat attractive, very sharp, sometimes funny too.

Yes, there are some very worthwhile women on TV news.. and some I’d rather not watch.